John Carmack
Carmack at the 2006 E3
Born	August 20, 1970 (1970-08-20) (age 37) Shawnee Mission, Kansas
Occupation	Technical Director, id Software Founder, Armadillo Aerospace
Spouse	Katherine Anna Kang

John D. The E3 Media and Business Summit, formerly known as Electronic Entertainment Expo and commonly known as E3, is an annual Trade show for the computer Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine Year 1970 ( MCMLXX) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Shawnee Mission Kansas is a name created by the United States Postal Service to describe an area ( Zip Code 662xx of Johnson County Kansas that contains id Software (ɪd officially is an American computer game developer based in Mesquite, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Armadillo Aerospace is an Aerospace Startup company based in Mesquite Texas. Katherine Anna Kang is a Machinima Film producer and Video game industry figure Carmack II (born August 20, 1970) is an American game programmer, and the co-founder of id Software. Events 636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine Year 1970 ( MCMLXX) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the A game programmer is a Programmer who primarily develops Video games or related Software (such as Game development tools. id Software (ɪd officially is an American computer game developer based in Mesquite, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Carmack was the lead programmer of the id computer games Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and subsequent sequels to Doom and Quake. Doom (officially cased DOOM) is a 1993 Computer game by Id Software that is a landmark title in the First-person shooter Quake is a First-person shooter Computer game that was released by Id Software on June 22, 1996.

Though Carmack is best known for his innovations in 3D graphics, he is also a rocketry enthusiast and the founder and lead engineer of Armadillo Aerospace. A rocket or rocket vehicle is a Missile, Aircraft or other Vehicle which obtains Thrust by the reaction of the Armadillo Aerospace is an Aerospace Startup company based in Mesquite Texas.

Biography

Youth

Carmack, son of local television news reporter Stan Carmack, grew up in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area where he became interested in computers at an early age. A computer is a Machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions. He attended Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, Kansas and Raytown South High School in nearby Raytown, Missouri. The Shawnee Mission School District ( Kansas Unified School District 512 is one of the major school districts in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. Prairie Village is a city in Johnson County, Kansas, United States, and is a satellite city of Kansas City Missouri. Raytown South Senior High School is a high school located in Raytown Missouri. Raytown is a city in Jackson County, Missouri, United States, and is a suburb of Kansas City. As reported in David Kushner's Masters of Doom, "when Carmack was 14, he broke into a school to steal Apple II computers, was arrested, and sent for psychiatric evaluation (the report mentions "no empathy for other human beings"). Masters of Doom How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture is a book by David Kushner about Id Software and its influence on popular culture Carmack was then sentenced to a year in a juvenile home. . . . he was asked "if you had not been caught, would you consider doing it again?" he answered "probably" but when the therapist presented this evaluation he neglected to repeat "if you had not been caught" from his statement". ^[1] After scoring a 1500 on the SAT (780 Math, 720 Verbal), he attended the University of Missouri–Kansas City for two semesters before withdrawing to work as a freelance programmer. The SAT Reasoning Test (formerly Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test) is a standardized test for College admissions in the The University of Missouri–Kansas City (often referred to as UMKC) is an institution of higher learning located in Kansas City, Missouri, USA

Game programming

Softdisk, a computer company in Shreveport, Louisiana, hired Carmack to work on Softdisk G-S (an Apple IIGS publication), uniting him with John Romero and other future key members of id Software such as Adrian Carmack (not related). Softdisk is a software and Internet company based in Shreveport Louisiana. Shreveport is the third-largest city and the principal city of the third largest Metropolitan area in the U Softdisk ( originally Softdisk Magazette, was a Disk magazine for the Apple II computer line published from 1981 through 1995 The Apple, the fifth model inception of the Apple II, was the most powerful member of the Apple II series of personal computers made by Apple Computer. Alfonso John Romero (born October 28 1967 in Colorado Springs, Colorado) is a Game designer, programmer, and Adrian Carmack (born on May 5, 1969) is one of the four founders of Id Software, along with Tom Hall, John Romero, and John D Later, this team would be placed by Softdisk in charge of a new, but short-lived, bi-monthly game subscription product called Gamer's Edge for the IBM PC (MS-DOS) platform. In 1990, while still at Softdisk, Carmack, Romero, and others created the first of the Commander Keen games, a series which was published by Apogee Software, under the shareware distribution model, from 1991 onwards. 3D Realms (legal name Apogee Software Ltd) is the name of a video and computer game producer (not publisher and developer based in Garland Texas, a suburb of The term shareware, popularized by Bob Wallace, refers to Copyrighted commercial Software that is Distributed without payment on a trial Afterwards, Carmack left Softdisk to co-found id Software, where he remains.

He has pioneered or popularised the use of many techniques in computer graphics, including "adaptive tile refresh" for Commander Keen, raycasting for Hovertank 3-D, Catacomb 3-D, and Wolfenstein 3-D, binary space partitioning which Doom became the first game to use, surface caching which he invented for Quake, Carmack's Reverse (formally known as z-fail stencil shadows) which he devised for Doom 3, and MegaTexture, used in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Ray casting is the use of ray-surface intersection tests to solve a variety of problems in computer graphics Binary space partitioning ( BSP) is a method for recursively subdividing a space into Convex sets by Hyperplanes This subdivision gives rise to Surface caching is a computer graphics technique pioneered by John Carmack, first used in the computer game Quake. Shadow volumes are a technique used in 3D computer graphics to add shadows to a rendered scene MegaTexture refers to a texture allocation technique facilitating the use of a single extremely large texture rather than repeating multiple smaller textures Enemy Territory Quake Wars ( ETQW) is a First-person shooter Video game, and is the follow-up to Wolfenstein Enemy While he was not the first to discover Carmack's Reverse, he developed it independently without knowing of the prior research done on the subject.

Carmack's engines have also been licensed for use in other influential first-person shooters such as Half-Life, Call of Duty and Medal of Honor. Half-Life is a Science fiction First-person shooter computer game developed by Valve Software and the company's debut product Call of Duty (released October 29, 2003) is a First-person shooter Video game based on the ''Quake III Team Arena'' engine Medal of Honor is the first title in the long-running ''Medal of Honor'' series of video games

When Carmack was on vacation with his wife, he ended up playing some games on her cellphone, and he realized that the games weren't any good. He then decided he was going to make a good mobile game. When he got back from his vacation he revealed that he had started working on Doom RPG. Doom RPG is a Mobile phone game developed by Fountainhead Entertainment. ^[2]

Aerospace

Main article: Armadillo Aerospace

Around the year 2000, Carmack became interested in rocketry, a hobby of his youth. Armadillo Aerospace is an Aerospace Startup company based in Mesquite Texas. Reviewing how much money he was spending on customizing Ferraris, he realized he could do significant work in rocketry and aerospace. This article is about the field of research and industry for the corporation see The Aerospace Corporation Aerospace comprises the He began by giving financial support to a few local amateur groups before starting Armadillo Aerospace. Armadillo Aerospace is an Aerospace Startup company based in Mesquite Texas. He taught himself aerospace engineering and is the lead engineer of the company. Since then he has made steady progress toward his goals of suborbital space flight and eventual orbital vehicles.

Free software

Carmack is a well-known advocate of open source software, and has repeatedly voiced his opposition to software patents, which he equates to "mugging someone". Open source software (OSS began as a marketing campaign for Free software. Software patent does not have a universally accepted definition ^[3] He has also contributed to open source projects, such as starting the initial port of the X Window System to Mac OS X Server and working to improve the OpenGL drivers for Linux through the Utah GLX project. Mac OS X Server is the server-oriented version of Apple 's Operating system, Mac OS X. Utah GLX was a project aimed at creating a fully Open source basic hardware-accelerated 3D rendering for XFree86 and OpenGL before the introduction

Carmack released the source code for Wolfenstein 3D in 1995 and the Doom source code in 1997. When the source code to Quake was leaked and circulated among the Quake community underground in 1996, a programmer unaffiliated with id Software used it to port Quake to Linux, and subsequently sent the patches to Carmack. Quake is a First-person shooter Computer game that was released by Id Software on June 22, 1996. Instead of pursuing legal action, id Software, at Carmack's behest, used the patches as the foundation for a company-sanctioned Linux port. Linux (commonly pronounced ˈlɪnəks id Software has since publicly released the source code to Quake, Quake 2 and most recently Quake 3, all under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The Doom source code was also re-released under the GPL in 1999.

Carmack is also noted for his generous contributions to charities and gaming communities. Some of the recipients of Carmack's charitable contributions include his former high school, promoters of open source software, opponents of software patents, and game enthusiasts. The definition of charitable organization, and of charity varies according to the country and in some instances the region of the country in which the charitable organization operates In 1997 he gave away one of his Ferraris (a 328 model) as a prize to Dennis Fong, the winner of the Quake "Red Annihilation" tournament. Ferrari SpA is an Italian Sports car manufacturer based in Maranello, Italy GTB and GTS The Pininfarina -styled 308 GTB was introduced at the Paris Motor Show in 1975 as a supplement to the odd Bertone -shaped ''Dino'' Dennis Fong (方鏞欽 born 1977 also known under the pseudonym Thresh, is a successful serial entrepreneur and celebrity in the gaming world

Id Tech 4 will also be open source. Open source is a development methodology which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge At QuakeCon 2007, Carmack said to LinuxGames: "I mean I won't commit to a date, but the Doom 3 stuff will be open source. QuakeCon is a bring-your-own-computer ( BYOC) Computer gaming event with a competitive tournament held every year in Dallas, Texas, USA " ^[4]

Personal life

Carmack during the 2005 X PRIZE Cup in Las Cruces and Alamogordo, New Mexico

Carmack met his wife Katherine Anna Kang at QuakeCon 1997 when she visited id's offices. The Ansari X PRIZE was a Space competition in which the X PRIZE Foundation offered a US$ 10000000 Prize for the first non-government Las Cruces is the second most populous city in New Mexico, the County seat of Doña Ana County, and a United States Metropolitan Statistical Area Alamogordo is a city in Otero County, New Mexico, United States of America. Katherine Anna Kang is a Machinima Film producer and Video game industry figure QuakeCon is a bring-your-own-computer ( BYOC) Computer gaming event with a competitive tournament held every year in Dallas, Texas, USA As a bet, Kang challenged Carmack to sponsor the first All Female Quake Tournament if she was able to produce a significant number of participants. At the time, female FPS computer gamers were more myth than reality. Kang's tournament, actually run by the Quake Clanring, had over 600+ registered female gamers trying to win a trip for 2 to California to win $2,000+ worth of prizes. Among them were Kornelia, KillCreek, and the PMS Clan: some of the most famed female players at the time. Stevana "Stevie" Case (born September 7, 1976) is a recognized figure from the Video game industry. Carmack and Kang married in January 2000 and had a son in 2004. Carmack has a blog (previously a .plan), and also occasionally posts comments to Slashdot. A blog (a contraction of the term " Web log " is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary descriptions of In Computer networking, the Name/Finger protocol and the Finger user information protocol are simple Network protocols for the exchange of human-oriented Slashdot, often abbreviated as /, is a technology-related news Website owned by SourceForge Inc In 2008, Carmack autographed a Nintendo DS for Child's Play. The is a dual-screen Handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. Child's Play is a Charitable organization founded by the authors of the popular computer and video games -based Webcomic Penny Arcade Due to a misunderstanding from the heads of the charity, it was instead offered as a prize in a contest. This mistake has since been rectified: the signed product was recovered and will be put on eBay to raise money for the charity. The prize has been replaced with a regular DS. ^[5]

Professional philosophy

One of the aspects of Carmack's life which has set him apart from his rivals is the lack of a need for a final release date goal while developing a new game. When asked for a release date on a new title, Carmack has famously quipped that the game will be released "when it's done". Employees at Apogee, in their past years the publishers of games by id Software, adopted this business practice as well. 3D Realms (legal name Apogee Software Ltd) is the name of a video and computer game producer (not publisher and developer based in Garland Texas, a suburb of

Recognition

• In 1999, Carmack appeared as number 10 in TIME's list of the 50 most influential people in technology. Time (trademarked in capitals as TIME) is a weekly American Newsmagazine, similar to Newsweek and [2]
• On March 22, 2001, Carmack became the fourth person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame, an honor bestowed upon those who have made revolutionary and innovative achievements in the video and computer game industry. Events 238 - Gordian I and his son Gordian II are proclaimed Roman emperor. Year 2001 ( MMI) was a Common year starting on Monday according to the Gregorian calendar.
• In 2003, Carmack was one of the subjects of the book Masters of Doom, a chronicle of id Software and its founders. Masters of Doom How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture is a book by David Kushner about Id Software and its influence on popular culture
• In 2005, the film Doom featured a character named Dr. Doom is a 2005 Science fiction Horror film adaptation of the popular Doom series of Video games created by Carmack, in recognition of Carmack who co-created the original game.
• In March 2006, Carmack was added to the Walk of Game, an event that recognizes the developers and games with the most impact on the industry. The Walk of Game is a year-round attraction honoring the icons and pioneers of the Video game industry. ^[6]
• In January of 2007 in Las Vegas, Nevada, John Carmack and id software were awarded with two Emmy Awards. The Science, Engineering & Technology for Broadcast Television, which includes broadcast, cable and satellite distribution, and secondly, Science, Engineering and Technology for Broadband and Personal Television, encompassing interactive television, gaming technology, and for the first time, the Internet, cell phones, private networks, and personal media players. id Software is the very first independent game developer to be awarded an Emmy since the Academy began honoring technology innovation in 1948. id Software (ɪd officially is an American computer game developer based in Mesquite, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. ^[7]
• In September 2007, Carmack appeared on Discovery Channel Canada Daily Planet, featuring his rocket designs along with the Armadillo Aerospace team.
• In 2008 Carmack was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for Quake's pioneering role of user modifiability. A Technology and Engineering Emmy Award is given by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS for outstanding achievement in technical or ^[8] He is the only game designer ever honored twice by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, having been given an Emmy Award in 2007 for his creation of the 3D technology that underlies modern shooter video games. A "game designer" is a person who designs Video games or one who designs traditional games such as Board games Video Games Designer A video game designer A video game is a Game that involves interaction with a User interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. Along with Don Daglow and Mike Morhaime, Carmack is one of only three game developers to accept awards at both the Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards and at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Interactive Achievement Awards. Don Daglow (born circa 1953 is an American Computer game and Video game designer, programmer and producer. Mike Morhaime is the president and a co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, a Video game developer located in Irvine California and currently owned The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences ( AIAS) founded in 1996, is a non-profit organization that promotes Computer and video The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS has been hosting the Interactive Achievement Awards for Video game publication annually since 1998.

References

Further reading

• Kushner, David (2003). David Kushner is a writer who has contributed to publications including Wired, The New York Times, Rolling Stone and Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, New York: Random House. Masters of Doom How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture is a book by David Kushner about Id Software and its influence on popular culture ISBN 0-375-50524-5.

External links

• John Carmack's Blog
• John Carmack's Blogged Dev Diaries
• Doom and Quake creator's dev diaries are blogged
• id Software's website
• Armadillo Aerospace site
• User Account on Slashdot
• User Account on the Space Fellowship
• John Carmack profile on MobyGames
• Carmack's QuakeCon 2006 Keynote Speech at Google Video
• Carmack's X-Prize video at Google Video
• E3 2006 Interview at YouTube

Articles:

• "TIME Digital 50" snippet on Carmack
• "The Age Of Doom", TIME article (2004)
• "The Egos at id", a Wired magazine feature article (1996)
• CES 2007 Interview
• John Carmack Answers from Slashdot
• "MegaTexture" technology
• "Carmack nails lid on PPU coffin"